


Shitty Month for Monster Hunting

by EdgarAllenPoet



Series: Whumptober 2019 [8]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty, Bisexuals in Love, Caretaking, F/M, Gross, Illnesses, Pre-Canon, Unconsciousness, whumptober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-07 23:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20983910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EdgarAllenPoet/pseuds/EdgarAllenPoet
Summary: "I ain't--" her own coughs and hacks cut her off, but she oughed into her elbow while swatting him away from her. "I told you I ain't goin' into the Goddamn hospital.""Yes," he argued. "You are.""No I ain't and I'd like to--" she coughed, nearly threw up on her own knees from the force of it, but swallowed it down.  White light burst behind her eyes and she heard a whimper that could not have come out of her, she didn't make noises like that.  She coughed again.  "I'd like to see you try an make me."





	Shitty Month for Monster Hunting

**Author's Note:**

> I currently have the flu! And once when I was eighteen I caught pneumonia, tried to sleep it off, and almost died. Let that be a lesson to ya. 
> 
> Whumptober #10: unconscious!

February was a shitty month for monster hunting. The weather climbed above freezing for the first time, getting just high enough for the heavy blankets of snow to melt and get all soupy, refreeze back into ice, and try and melt again. Mama had soaked entirely through her waterproof boots. It was _miserable_. 

The monster had been a mist, something heavy and noxic that settled over any given area with an ominous hissing and the a feeling like fever behind the eyelids. They’d tried everything from spraying it down with a water hose to sucking it up in a shop vac, but they’d eventually figured to light it on fire-- that is, Margo set it on fire on accident while lighting up a cigarette-- and they’d managed to get rid of the thing. 

They trudged back to the Lodge, shaking snow from their boots and unwrapping scarves from around their faces. Usually the mist symptoms cleared out within half an hour of being free from the fumes, but an hour passed and everyone was patched up and settling in for the night, and Mama hadn’t managed to move from the couch or stop wheezing. 

“You good?” Thacker asked her, or at least she was pretty sure it was Thacker. Her ears felt pretty stuffed up, making hearing anything a feat she wasn’t quite capable of, and she couldn’t find it in her to open her eyes. 

“Fine,” she said, her own voice unfamiliar on her ears, echoing in her skull. “Just gotta sleep it off.” 

“Right.” 

“Get on outta here, ya did good tonight.” 

He was probably nodding, turning and heading off to find a place to turn in. The Pine Guard tended to grab random rooms around the Lodge that weren’t occupied by Sylphs after particularly hard fights and late nights. There were couches in the cellar too if need be. She was pretty proud of the home she’d managed to set up here. 

“Hey, you comin’ to bed?” Barclay asked, and Mama hadn’t even heard him sneak up on her. She groaned, squeezed her eyes tight against the lamp he turned on somewhere. “Thacker said you weren’t lookin’ too good.”

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, and Barclay chuckled quietly. 

The floor boards creaked as he came closer. “Yeah,” he agreed. “How dare he. C’mon now, you’ll be more comfortable in bed.” 

“Don’t need to be comfortable, I need ta sleep.” 

“Sure thing, crabby,” he agreed, but his hands were under her bicep anyways and hefting her up to her feet. She tried to balance on her own but found herself sagging into him instead. He didn’t seem to mind too much, looping his arm under her shoulders and holding her up as they struggled off to the bedroom. Mama still hadn’t managed to open her eyes. 

“You shivering?” he asked. 

Huh, maybe she was. “Damn cold out there.” 

“Yeah, it is, huh,” he said, nudging her gently, and she trusted him enough to follow his guidance with her eyes closed and found herself sitting on the edge of the bed. “Hang tight,” he said, and in the blink of an eye he was back, dropping something soft but heavy onto the mattress next to her before disappearing again. Another flash of time, and someone was tugging her boots off her feet and scrubbing her face and hands down with a hot rag. 

“You’re burning up,” he said, and Mama frowned. 

“What?” 

“Fever hasn’t worn off yet I guess. You doing okay?” 

“Peachy keen,” she said, and slumped over sideways onto the bed. She doesn’t remember anything after that, but she can imagine him pulling the rest of her filthy work clothes off and tucking her in under the blankets. 

She woke up some time later absolutely on fire. 

She was trembling all over, stomach turning over and making her dizzy, but her skin was on fire and she woke up to the sensation of all the air being punched from her lungs. She gasped, wheezed, and sprung up in bed just to immediately get too dizzy and have to catch herself on the mattress. Barclay jolted up next to her like a God damned jack-in-the-box, taking her elbow and scooching to get a better look at her. 

“Whoa, are you oka- Jesus, Mama, you’re on fire.” 

“M’fine,” she muttered, swatting his hands away from her. She couldn’t breathe. She needed water. She swung her legs out of bed, hair immediately prickling with the frozen cold air. She shivered a bit more violently, shoved herself to her feet, and damn near collapsed right there. 

Barclay leapt out of bed to steady her, pushing her back down to sit and rubbing her back as a coughing fit racked her lungs and doubled her over. She pressed her forehead to her knees and counted slowly, ten Mississippi, because this wasn’t any kind of panic attack but it could real easily turn into one. 

“Okay, hold on, don’t move, just stay right there, okay?” Barclay said, fretting the way he always did. She wanted to tease him over it, but there was some sorta disconnect from her brain to her mouth and putting words together was far more energy than she was capable. Instead she waved him off, wrist floppier than it ought to be. He was gone, and she closed her eyes, and he was back in an instant. Time was all kinds of fucky. 

“Under the tongue,” he mumbled, pushing a thermometer into her mouth, and she wanted to yell at him because she was _fine_, they’d been dealing with his fever bullshit all week. Instead she took the thermometer and tried to sit up, ignoring the urge to grab the quilt off the bed and wrap it around herself, she was _freezing_. 

She clenched her fists instead, willed herself to stop shaking. She closed her eyes again, time passed, a beeping noise woke her back up in an instant. 

“Fuck,” Barclay said. His voice was far away, but she could feel him pulling something out of her mouth. She might have drooled on him. Ah well, he’d seen grosser. “Alright, let me get you dressed, we’re going to the hospital.” 

“We are _not_,” she argued, and then immediately started coughing. The kinds of coughs so deep that it hurt, that it made her head pound in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before, like Satan’s worst kind of hangover. Like that concussion she’d gotten back in ‘87, maybe. Maybe worse. 

“We are too,” he said, raising his voice over her coughs but tone not shifting from anything but _concerned_. The coughing stopped, but the moment it did, bile rose up in her throat and she pressed a hand to her mouth, wanting to scramble for the bathroom but having no idea where on Earth it was. 

Barclay shoved a trash bin into her hands, and she emptied her stomach, choking on coughs that exploded out of her without any sort of permission whatsoever. She felt dizzy. She might pass out again. 

With a lot of help from Barclay, the two of them managed to get dressed in sweat pants, boots, and two sweatshirts under her winter jacket. He shoved a hat onto her head even though she was _on fire_ and all but carried her down the hall and through the front room, even though she demanded to have her feet on the ground so she could walk her damn self. 

“Is everything okay?” she heard a tiny voice ask from somewhere, and it was enough of a jolt for her to peel her eyes open. Dani stood in the mouth of the hallway, peaking out into the common room of the Lodge. She had her hair pulled into two low hanging braids under her ears, and she had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Whether vampire or human, the kid only looked to be about twelve years old. She was the newest one they’d gotten, only a handful of months ago. She clutched her blanket tighter around herself and stared with wide eyes that glowed at them. “Mama?” 

Her voice rasped when she tried to talk, and her tongue felt like wet wool, but she managed nonetheless. “I’m fine, baby, you go back up to bed now,” she said. 

“You don’t look fine,” she said, and thankfully Barclay took over for her. 

He leaned Mama up against the registration desk and went off to bundle Dani back up towards bed. She heard him talking as he went, “I’m taking Mama to the hospital, but she’ll be fine once we get there. If you wanna help you can tell Thacker or one of the others where we went when they wake up, okay? If none of the Pine Guard get up, you can tell Moira. She’ll be able to keep an eye on things.” 

His voice died out, and then footsteps announced his return. He gathered her up with his arm under his shoulders again and hauled her off out the door and down the stairs, into the snow. 

“Don’t need a hospital,” she complained. 

He scoffed, audibly. “Like hell. One-oh-four isn’t a healthy temperature.” 

“Oh it ain’t that high,” she wheezed. The cold air ached in her lungs. She started coughing again, stumbled on the way to the truck. If Barclay wasn’t there she would have passed out in the snow and froze to death, but she didn’t need a Goddamn hospital. 

“Stop fighting me,” he complained, and then she was in the truck, though she wasn’t sure how she got there. She cracked her fiery eyes open and turned the heat on full blast with fingers that trembled so bad she could barely touch the knobs. Barclay glanced at her sideways, concern painted all over his face and breath coming out in tiny puffs. She wanted to say she was fine, reassure him. She’d been sick before, she’d pull through. No bug was gonna take her down when she spent her free time monster hunting. 

But then they were rumbling down the gravel drive that lead to Amnesty, truck bouncing and jostling and making her queasy again. She shut her eyes to counter it, and when she opened them again, he was shaking her awake at the hospital. 

She coughed, curling away from him and hacking something dark green and terrible into her hands. She cringed and wiped them on her jeans, put all her willpower into suppressing her coughs and failed. He came around and opened her door, went to held escort her out of the truck, and she pulled away from him. 

“I ain’t--” her own coughs and hacks cut her off, but she coughed into her elbow while swatting him away from her. “I told you I ain’t goin’ into the Goddamn hospital.” 

“_Yes,” _he argued. “You _are.” _

_“_No I _ain’t_ and I’d like to--” she coughed, nearly threw up on her knees, but swallowed it down. White light burst behind her eyes and she heard a whimper that could _not_ have come out of her, she didn’t make noises like that. She coughed again, “I’d like to see you try,” she managed eventually, and when she opened her eyes again Barclay had his hands on his hips, the Goddamn drama queen. 

“Madeline Cobb, I swear to God I will carry you into the hospital like a sack of potatoes, is that what you want?” he asked, and she had to take a moment just to stare at him. She was so in love with him, sometimes she just couldn’t believe it. 

She climbed out of the car, letting him hold her up again as they started to hobble of through the snow. “What?” she asked, voice weak. “No middle name?” 

He made a grumbly noise in his throat. “Too tired, can’t remember it.” 

With better lungs she would have laughed. Instead, she barely managed a grin. “Dork,” she said, in between coughs. He squeezed her shoulders tight for a moment. 

“You don’t get to make fun of me after throwing up on me. There are laws to the universe, you know.” 

She frowned, her vision swam a moment. When it cut it out again she said, “I did not throw up on you,” and they’d made it all the way to the front door. There was a blast of warm air from the heaters as they walked in and it damn near knocked her over. 

“You really did,” he said, placing her into a wheelchair, taking his coat off, and wrapping it around her shoulders. “If you can’t remember that, you _definitely_ need to be here.” 

“Bull shit,” she said, and dissolved into another coughing fit. She closed her eyes and felt the world move underneath her as he wheeled her into the ER. The lights were too bright. She couldn’t bear to open her eyes back up. 

The next time she did, someone was peeling her coat away and helping her onto a bed behind a privacy curtain. A nice looking young woman on one arm, Barclay on the other. “Just settle down,” he murmured, “We got you.” 

“Ms. Cobb, I’m gonna take your blood pressure,” the young woman said, and Mama just nodded and sagged over sideways against Barclay. He was warm and sturdy, and she was still fucking shivering. 

“I got you,” he said, and she felt him press a kiss to her forehead. She didn’t mind it so much, maybe, but she intended to raise hell about the whole thing just as soon as she could open her eyes and put five words together without coughing. Her lungs felt achy. The cuff around her arm tightened, somehow making her head hurt worse. She tucked her face in towards the crook of Barclay’s neck-- soft, fabric softened flannel against her cheek, prickly ends of stumble creeping down his neck scratching against her forehead, sweat soaked hair flattened against her skin-- and breathed him in. “I got you,” he repeated. 

“The doctor’ll be in soon,” the nurse said, “Go ahead and get some rest.” 

And she did. 

**Author's Note:**

> Cobbclay wasn't a ship I meant to get into, but now it's a ship I can't live without. Maybe we can convert more people to write fanfic for it. Welcome to the party.


End file.
